Crashing Shuttles
by Fang323
Summary: Chakotay has had one-too-many shuttle accidents. Janeway might just finally blow up this time.
1. Chapter 1

Hey there, Fang here. This fiction that I started writing started to turn out to be longer than I had anticipated, so I have turned into a chapter fic. Surprising, since I didn't intend to write this much, but I've been on something of a tear with words right now. Please enjoy!

* * *

Captain Katheryn Janeway glared at the time on the biobed. 02:00 hours. She had been here for seven hours straight. She doubted she had moved from her chair in half that. The Doctor hadn't bothered to even suggest her moving to her quarters for rest, though that might have had something to do with the death glare she had shot him as he opened his mouth to ask her to leave his patient.

Katheryn kept his hand warm in hers, both lying atop his stomach. She had mapped out his limp hand mentally, every small scar, every wrinkle and line in the soft skin. When he woke up, she had so much to yell at him for after this idiotic escapade. He wasn't getting away scotfree this time.

She pressed her fingers against the inside of his wrist, feeling his pulse beat steadily underneath the skin. He was alive. Chakotay stayed alive and came back to her. For now, while he was still unconscious, that was enough.

"Chakotay..." she murmured, wishing that that would wake him, wishing he could hear the plea in his name. His peaceful face did not move, and she sighed, a smile playing on her lips anyway just from being next to him.

Kathryn moved her chair closer to his bio-bed, closer to Chakotay, and laid her head on his blanketed chest, right on top of his heart. The strong beat calmed her more than the softer throb of pulse in his wrist. She closed her eyes, her entire being focused upon that heart.

* * *

He awoke groggily from the deep unconsciousness that had put him under in the first place. A quiet beeping rang out in his returning hearing, a nice, constant object for him to concentrate on. He would worry about opening his eyes later.

Quiet footsteps walked past him and he caught a whispered question to his side. Feeling a bit like the Sherlock Holmes of literary fame, only not so qualified, he surmised that he was indeed not dead and now in sickbay. From the sound of the foosteps, so quick and sure of themselves with an air of extreme self-importance, he could only guess the Doctor was by him at the moment.

Oh. Yes. The accident.

He didn't even want to know how he had survived this one.

Chakotay cringed slightly as pain shot into his temple, and the rest of his senses came rushing back to life. He lay on a bio-bed, a soft pillow cradling his head and a standard issue blanket covering his form. Yes, certainly sickbay.

He cracked open his eyes to find himself staring up towards the ceiling, squinting at the bright light glinting back at him. Chakotay tried to move his hand up to shield his sight, but nothing even remotely moved. Only then, once he had snapped out of his confusion, did he feel the weight lying almost directly on top of him. He glanced down to find a smooth hand caught tightly in his, the obvious reason for his lack of movement. He slowly tightened his grip upon that hand, feeling it respond in kind.

Chakotay's mouth upturned into a smile when he saw the person using him as a human pillow. He knew he was home.

* * *

Author's Comments:

Just a quick little blurb, this chapter. More like a taste of what is to come. Sorry for not posting the rest of it as immediately as this chapter, but as the rest of the story still lies hand-written in my notebook, I have to type it up. I might post more later today, so watch for it!

Please review, as they do tend to be my inspiration for writing, and I am always looking for new stories to write or new ideas to base things off of. I can also use improvements in my writing, as I take it very, very seriously.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey there, Fang here. Next installment is up! Enjoy.

* * *

Chakotay lifted his head carefully, mindful of the stinging pain in his right temple, to meet Janeway's eyes. She still lay on his chest, and made no motion to change position.

"Good morning." he rasped, his face breaking into a weaker version of his wry smile. As much as Kathryn wanted to stay stern and allow the pent-up worry and anger to come out in her reprimand, his smile dissipated much of it that had built up inside for the moment. The corners of her mouth lifted involuntarily.

Taking her head off his chest, she moved closer to his head, placing the hand that wasn't joined with his on his bare shoulder.

"You owe me a new shuttle." she raised an eyebrow. Chakotay let out a small chuckle.

"Well, there go my replicator rations for a month..." he half-joked.

"I swear, Chakotay, I'm almost considering never letting you pilot another one. I'll threaten to send Tom with you, so he can successfully bring it back." she admonished. Chakotay shrugged tiredly.

"The ion storm we saw on the long range sensors hit too fast. Hull breach was imminent once the shields went. After I fell unconscious, I doubt much else could have been done." he commented matter-of-factly.

Kathryn opened her mouth with a comeback, but at that moment, the Doctor strode in, seeing his patient awake.

"Ah, Commander...good to see you haven't lost any more brain cells in your recovery...not that there was much to begin with, considering the ignorance of the risks of going out in a shuttlecraft here in the first place."

"I don't think I'm quite responsible for a storm..."

"Prehaps not, but considering the decision to take one out to collect readings that we honestly didn't even remotely need despite your insistance-"

"Doctor. how long will the Commander be required to stay here?" Janeway quickly interrupted, but Chakotay merely raised his brow in amusement at the Doctor's manner.

Unpreturbed, the Doctor continued. "I would _like_ to keep him here for a day or two more, depending on his cooperation or lack there-of...but..." he sighed dramatically and long-sufferingly, "he can be safely discharged in a few hours, once I make the necessary checks, if you wish."

He clearly did no seem pleased by the diagonsis, and Janeway would have gladly let him have his way any other day, but right now there were words unspoken between her and her first officer that needed to come to life. For her, the sooner it was, the better.

"Once he is fit to leave, please release him." she held up a hand as the Doctor opened his mouth in protestation. "That does not mean I will return him to duty, Doctor. That call is entirely yours to make."

The Doctor finally looked appeased at that, and began his check-up on Chakotay's progress. Janeway waited patiently while he worked, already trying to figure out in her mind what exactly she would say to her first officer. She could not come up with anything that wouldn't sound scripted or fake. She simply had to come up with it on the spot, and hope the words would come out the right way.

The Doctor had finished attending to Chakotay's remaining injuries with his trusty hypospray and his dermal regenerator, and had propped him up against the wall behind the bio bed.

"Your ribs are fine, but any sort of exertion on your behalf will undo all the exquisitely brilliant work I've done on them, and along with your recovering concussion, I would expect to see you withing twelve hours of you leaving my sickbay. Seems to be all the people on this ship do here, create more work for me." he punctuated with an aggravated stare at Chakotay. Her first officer's non-smile was lighting up his face. The Doctor huffed and began tapping quickly into a PADD.

Janeway tapped her comm badge. "Janeway to Bridge."

"Tuvok here, Captain. I assume nothing out of the ordinary has occured?"

"Commander Chakotay is fine. Do you need me up on the Bridge? Or can you manage?"

"Nothing is in direct need of your attention, Captain."

"Understood. Janeway out."

Tapping her comm closed, she walked briskly to the Doctor, who had made his way to the other side of sickbay. Now was better than ever to talk to Chakotay, especially when she didn't know when this rare relative peace Voyager hardly ever found itself in would end and they would all be back to fighting for their lives.

"Doctor...I would like to speak to Chakotay." she murmured. He gestured to the patient on the other side of the room mindlessly. She cleared her throat. The Doctor looked up at her, and finally realized what she meant. Sheepishly, he placed the PADD down and transferred his program to Holodeck 2.

Janeway walked to Chakotay's bedside and sat down on the empty space beside him. Chakotay opened his eyes and sought her own, that almost constant smile hidden in his expression.

Kathryn waited patiently for him to speak first, not trusting herself to be able to start this off on a good note. Thankfully, Chakotay caught her reasoning and obligingly began.

"So how many crashes does this make?" he grinned wryly.

"Seven." she replied instantly. She doubted it would be impossible to forget. At the more solemn tone in her voice, Chakotay easily switched to a more appropriate reaction.

"Look, Kathryn...there was nothing-"

"You've tried that excuse too many times now, Chakotay." she interrupted. The worry and anger she had pushed away a few minutes before was quickly returning. Chakotay wrinkled his brow, the pain apparently gone from his head thanks to some medication the Doctor forced on him. He was obviously rather confused,but unfortunatly, that just frustrated her further for reasons she couldn't understand herself. "It's not going to work again. Don't keep pushing these incidents aside!"

Chakotay's face had gone stone-cold in misunderstanding.

"Kathryn, you can't possibly believe that every crash is my fault!" he exclaimed.

"I never said that, and you know that's not what I mean!" she shot back, sitting up as straight as a poker in her anger.

"Then what?" his dark eyes met her own, both flashing with the intensity of lightning.

"How can you possibly be so lax in these cases? You were seriously injured, only recently healed thanks to the Doctor, and you were barely conscious only an hour or so ago!" she looked at him in disbelief, and threw her hands up in exasperation. "And all this after you went off on some fool mission you coerced me into allowing you to go just for an abnormal anomaly! With, might I add, a rather turbulent storm heading for that exact location!" She looked imploringly at him, most of her piece said.

Chakoay was quiet. "I don't know what you want me to say. It was an accident. You can't expect every away mission to go off without a hitch." he treaded carefully over this new ground.

"That's not an excuse."

"Kathryn, I'm not trying to make excuses! I'm trying to show you that nothing we could have done in that storm would have done any good!"

"Oh, there's always something!"

"Kathryn, you're being unreasonable!"

"Oh, and you aren't?" She fired back.

"It was a simple mistake!"

"Like hell it was!"

"Why arey you making such a big deal out of this? I'm alive, and we can replicate a new shuttle without much trouble-"

"Damn it, Chakotay, I refuse to lose you! I couldn't survive it!"

Sickbay sank into dead silence. Cakotay stared at his captain, eyes wide and unblinking. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kathryn clammed up quickly, not even daring to look at her first officer after that breach.

"...K...Kathryn?" his voice carried all the confusion and questioning that she was not ready to answer. Janeway closed her eyes and got off of his bed, not even wanting to look at him as she quickly stepped out of sickbay.

The doors closed behind her just as swiftly as she had swept out.

* * *

Author's Comments:

As promised, the second part. Part three may or may not also be up tonight, but that depends on if I feel like writing on this fandom or on my Sherlock story. Either way, I will post again, just maybe not this one. I hope you enjoyed anyway!

Please review, as this is the first time I have tried dialogue between these two. I'm still trying to figure out how to write them when they're not internally monologueing all day. Thank you!

-Fang


	3. Chapter 3

Hey there, Fang here. Last installment of this fic, since I have finally gotten my muse back. Enjoy!

* * *

Once her duty shift had ended, Janeway made for her quarters immediately. The Doctor had assured her that it would still be a few more hours until he was done with Chakotay, but at the same time, she didn't want to be sidetracked in the mess hall or the holodeck, where he might accidentally find her. At the moment, she doubted if she could even face him after her little outburst. It was overemotional, it was unprofessional.

She entered her quarters making sure to put it under a security lock to make sure no one could bypass the door or force their way in. She did not want to see anyone, much less Chakotay. Kathryn wanted to think, without any interruptions.

"Coffee, black." she ordered from the replicator. Once it materialized in the tray, she lifted up the steaming cup and brought it to the sofa. She sat down wearily, and took a sip of the rejuvinating liquid.

Why had she said that? Why had she simply just blurted out the truth? THat was on the list of never-reveal-to-anyone, and it was practically number one. Chakotay had been in worse scapes than this. Why was this the one to set her off?

It didn't matter. She had said it, and there was no way to erase it. of course, with their luck, they would run into a temporal anomaly and time would rewind, making sure they would either forget all about it, or end up going through that horrifically awkward conversation again.

She hadn't meant to say it. She never wanted to, and yet Kathryn had become so damned worked up about it! It was idiotic.

But right now, she didn't have to worry about Chakotay. This right now, here in her quarters, was meant to relax her, to calm her down as well as pick her up. Thank God for the wonders of coffee.

"Coffee, black, two sugars." said the familiar, calm voice. THe replicator lit up in the dark, shining upon the handsome face of her first officer. No, why was she thinking handsome? That wasn't like her at all!

A more pressing matter was upon her, though, and she quickly set her coffee down harder than she had intended and stood up.

"And just how the hell did you enter into my quarters?" Kathryn demanded harshly. Chakotay shrugged guiltily. "I might have dismissed myself out of sickbay a little early."

"How the hell did you get past the Doctor?" she asked incredulously. He grinned, a mischievious twinkle in his eye.

"When the Doc gets wrapped up in his program in Holodeck Two, it gets pretty damn easy to convince him that he can go play and that I'll be 'fine'." He admitted.

"That doesn't explain how you were able to sneak into my quarters without my knowing. I would have heard the door open."

"No, not quite. I was already in here for a good fifteen minutes before you showed up. You were the one who game me the override codes to your quarters, remember?"

"So you camped out in my bedroom then?" she quirked an eyebrow.

"Well, the Doc did tell me to stay lying down. Just following his orders." The laughing quality was back in his voice as he sat down in the chair across from her. An awkward, unfulfilled silence sat betwene them, and neither had any inclination of breaching it just yet. Janeway kept her eyes on her drink, watching the thing tendril of steam rise from the hot liquid. How did one start?

The entire scenario she had worked out in her head in preparation for this confrontation flew out the nearest airlock as soon as Chakotay had made his prescense known. If sh ewas going to fix this, Kathryn was going to be flying the the skin of her teeth.

"Well, if you're confused about this whole thing, that takes a burden off my mind..." Chakotay supplied albeit unhelpfully, rubbing his head where the Doctor had just finished repairing the damage. He looked at Kathryn intently.

She sighed, and set her cup down on the end table.

"Chakotay...what I said in Sickbay...It was a complete lack of judgement on my part. I was...just so frustrated at losing another shuttle, that I didn't think about what I was saying."

"Losing the shuttle?"

"Yes. I always send you off in a shuttle with some trepidation, because I'm pretty sure Tuvok calculated the percentage of it never coming back at 72.35%."

Chakotay laughed, and Kathryn watched the familiar wrinkle of his eyes light up his entire face. If she could just listen to that man's laugh constantly, things in the Delta Quadrent wouldn't seem so damn hopeless.

"Well, I guess Tuvok would know then, huh?" The smile remained in his voice, bringing a different sort of light to the dimmed quarters. Janeway hid her own grin in her coffee.

A much more companionable quiet overtook the room, and Kathryn hoped that her humor had dissipated the question that had been in Chakotay's eyes. When she looked up at him, though, his smile had fallen. She swallowed.

"So you weren't worried about me?" he asked quietly.

"What? Chakotay, that wasn't what I meant..."

"I mean, I know you were upset at the shuttle, but-"

"No, listen! You mean a great deal to me! My first officer, my best friend, my confidant..."

Chakotay ran his hand through his finely cut hair.

"Not enough then, huh?" Kathryn flinched at that. "You have Tuvok and the others. You're the captain, and irreplacable. I'm-"

"Stop it, Chakotay." she raised her voice. "You are irreplaceable to this ship, this crew, and me!"

"Oh? So then what you said to me in Sickbay..."

"Wasn't a lie!" She said angrily. One look at Chakotay's almost smug grin shut her mouth though, and colored her face with a blush.

Chakotay chuckled wryly. "Sorry, Kathryn, but you seem to be quite honest when you're defensive."

Kathryn could only shake her head.

"Heh...so it wasn't a lie. You really were worried."

"Well, of course! Where would I be without my trusted friend?" she gave him a small grin.

"Kathryn, I'm not sure trusted friends sleep on their first officer when they're in Sickbay."

Kathryn really did blush there, and even Chakotay seemed a bit uncomfortable.

"Or hold their hand for the entire seven hours they were unconscious..." his voice grew much softer. Kathryn, knowing that she had nowhere to run, stared directly at him. Chakotay stood up from his place across from her and set his coffee aside. Janeway didn't pretend not to notice the slight wince of pain that followed his movements; obviously, he wasn't as fine as he said he was.

Never mind that though. Chakotay was coming around to her chair, his face determined, but gentle. She felt her pulse skyrocket, but kept her face composed as he bent in front of her chair and placed his hands on either side of her, effectivly trapping her in place.

"Kathryn?" his voice was a near whisper, he was so close. She could feel his warm breath on her face.

Right then, she made up her mind. Kathryn stood up, pushing Chakotay away. His kind face, so full of hope and nervousness only a second before fell to one of accepted disappointment.

"I...I'm sorry, Captain..." he ducked his head to hide his face before he gave anything else away.

"I...should get back to sickbay before the Doctor is done with his program in the Holodeck." he murmured, and went to leave.

Janeway's hand on his chest stopped him. He only had a second to look at her in confusion before she had reached an arm around his neck and pulled him into a gentle kiss.

All thought left his mind at his lips meeting hers. Time refused to start up again, and so he let himself be pulled into her embrace and wrapped his own arms around the woman he had fallen for over and over again.

* * *

When the Doctor angrily turned on the visual monitor to Janeway's quarters to complain about a certain man, his protests and ramblings died in his throat.

His missing, insubordinate patient was sleeping on the sofa in the middle of the room, with an equally dead-to-the-world starship captain lying on top of him. HIs arms were wrapped protectively around her, and her hand had worked its way to grasp at the fabric of his uniform jacket.

The Doctor smirked, and with a roll of his eyes, he shut off the monitor.

* * *

Author's Comments:

I love these two too much, right...

I hoped you liked it, and please review, it's fun, believe me.

AAAAAAND now I have to find another inspiration for another JC fic...which means I will be forced to watch some Voyager episodes. Such a punishment, right? :D

-Fang


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